I have reached a final settlement with Guardians of Order, the Canadian games company that published the role-playing game based on A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE before going under last year.

We're now all square, and that license has officially expired. It is not the ending that I would have hoped for, but I'm glad to have concluded things amicably.

As part of our settlement, I have acquired the remaining stock of the deluxe, limited edition of the RPG worldbook, a huge and lavishly illustrated hardcover. I will be listing the book for sale on the "Signed Books" page of my website in the very near future, but I thought I'd give my Not-a-Bloggers a little advance notice.

If any of you want to snag a copy, the price is $100, which includes book rate shipping within the United States (overseas is more). This is a big and beautiful book with lots of great artwork, and tons of background material on the world of Westeros that may be of interest even to those who do not play role-playing games. And needless to say, I would be glad to sign and inscribe the book on request. You can get a look at the cover and some of the graphics by scrolling back through the Archives sections of the news page.

(Please email if you are interested, don't comment about it here).

There will be another RPG in the future. I am considering offers from several other companies right now, and expect to have a new license to announce within the next couple of months,

Comments

Thrilled to hear that the AGoT RPG will live again...I already have the deluxe edition, but I think a second copy would be a worthy investment since we're starting our campaign as soon as the last player finishes the novels.

Any thoughts about approaching Citadel Minatures or Hogshead games in England about producing both the RPG and/or a minatures game for the books? Alot of us gamers have always thought that wars between the various houses would make an excellent wargame. After all you have several factions, each with a unique flavor and style...food for thought.

Testors once announced that it would be producing a miniatures skirmishing game. All sorts of problems have come up with their announced product lines, but they did exhibit some miniatures and terrain at Gencon (I think), they did produce at least a draft set of rules designed by Andy Card (initially, anyways; I think it was then done in-house after he was hired by Blizzard), and Tom Meier said a few months ago that he had been told to send his master miniatures to a third party for (IIIRC) mass production.

No word on it since then, but I'd guess that if Testors ultimately doesn't do a miniatures game, it'll be awhile before the license is free and clear.

Hogshead changed hands about 5-6 years ago and all previous licenses returned back to their respective owners. Warhamemr Fantasy RPG to games Workshop, SLA Industries to Nightfall Games, De Profundis to Portal, etc. The new owners of Hogshead produced a couple fo ranges of d20 Modern Crime Sourcebooks and Horror Adventures before vanishing from the face of the planet about 3 years ago.

Games Workshop (who own Citadel Miniatures) have since created a new publishing division called Black Industries which have published a brand new edition of the Warhammer FRPG (with Green Ronin over in seattle acting as the design studio for them) and are currently working on the development of a RPG based upon their Warhammer 40,000 setting.

It'll be interesting to see who tenders bids for the RPG setting and what the ultimate publisher will do with it. There are a number of systems that could be used for it, including the d20 version that GOO published. I'd be slightly surprised if a new version used d20 though for three reasons. 1) A d20 edition already exists and thus would limit the new publishers sales for their own core rulebook 2)The d20 market has collapsed considerably in the last few years and 3) There are rumours that the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (d20 is based upon the current 3rd and 3.5 editions of the game whose core systems are available as part of the Open Gaming License)when/if it is released will not contain an Open Game License - thus limiting the compatibility of any d20 products with the world's number 1 RPG.

Good luck with the deals though. I'll be interested to see how things develop.